Chains and Pendants
by MeredithBrody
Summary: After Brody gives LaSalle Emily's chain, Pride thinks of the perfect chain to give Brody (Spoilers through the season finale)(implied proto-Prody)


**So, season finale tonight! I KNOW RIGHT. Anyway. I needed to write something that continued the "family" train through a Brody and Pride thing... because I had to. I actually had an idea about this after seeing the scene on TLLS last night. So, this was the thing. My summer projects will be starting in the next couple of days. I have one more pseudo-episode tag to add to this tomorrow though. Anyway. Enjoy, and rest assured, Shin will keep you guys entertained through hiatus (with help from everyone else!). Anyway, read and review as always.  
Thanks, Shin xx**

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The party was exactly what she'd needed, and at this point she didn't even know what this one was for. Their entire team was just celebrating the fact that they were alive. At least LaSalle seemed to have cheered up a bit. She left him with Percy and Patton as she just needed a minute to herself. It was at that moment that she felt someone behind her, and she knew who it was before he said anything. He sidled up beside her and put his hand on top of hers gently before he said anything. "I heard what you said to Christopher?"

"What?" She asked. Over the last couple of days she'd said a lot of things to LaSalle. The two of them hadn't been getting on so well lately. They were bickering like siblings though, and she knew that when push came to shove he'd have her back. He just had a lot to work through, and she was sure that right now they were all probably memories for him.

"About me and him giving you a family here." Oh, that was what he'd overheard. When she was being nice of course. He wouldn't get involved in the other one unless he had to. "I'm glad." He smiled and squeezed her hand gently.

"It's true." She decided that she could expand a little for him. The common connection she and her parents had had died when Emily died. She missed her sister every single day, but since coming to this place, meeting these people, it was easier to deal with it. "I've not felt like I had a family since Emily died, you know my relationship with my parents is... well strained. So thank you for that too." She squeezed his hand in return, glad that he'd searched her out.

"You're part of our family now Meredith." He indicated behind him to the rest of their team, including their newest member. It seemed like they had all realised that she and Pride had needed to talk, and they did. The only problem she had with his statement was her name. It just made her think of her mother, and that wasn't the best sometimes.

"If you're going to start using my given name, use Merri. Nobody calls me Meredith." She wasn't going to say it, but from the look on Pride's face he knew anyway. Not surprising. He seemed to have an almost sixth sense about what was bothering her. But at least that was a opening into what she and LaSalle had been doing. "I gave LaSalle something that signified me feeling like a part of the family, and that you were now my family too."

"You gave him the chain?" He just looked at her a little smugly, and she was sure if he hadn't put his bottle down he would have taken a swig right then just to show how nonchalant he was.

"How did you...?" Of course, he'd been there in the aftermath of the _Moultrie_ , and he'd been there every day since. Of course he knew about the chain. "I did." She decided that just telling him might be better. Pretending that wasn't what she'd given him would require energy that she didn't have after the last couple of weeks.

"What about the pendant? Your birthstone, right?" That was something that he had either guessed at, or looked up. As she had never told him, and he had never asked. It had always stayed under her clothes, or she'd put it away safe. There was no way that he could have known.

She just shrugged in the end, the truth was that the chain and pendant had come separately to being with, but Emily in her individual aesthetic had decided they went well together. Brody could easily find another chain for it, it didn't need to be meaningful. The pendant was meaningful enough right now. "I'll find another chain for it."

"I think I have the perfect one." Pride said after thinking for a few minutes. She just looked at him, as he had never seemed like the type to have any jewellry, and she'd never seen him with anything other than his wedding ring.

"Really?" It just didn't seem to fit with the man she knew that he'd have a chain just laying around. If he had something that maybe Laurel had left somewhere that would at least explain it, but the look on his face told her that maybe, just maybe, this actually meant something to him, and that would mean it would mean something to her too.

"Come to my room, I'll show you." He turned immediately, but she made a grab for his good arm and pulled him back, dropping her voice so it was barely loud enough to be heard over the street music.

"King." She motioned around the entire party, their friends would almost certainly notice if they disappeared, and she wasn't sure either of them were ready for the gossip that would start. They might have been getting closer in their private lives before Baitfish reappeared, but they certainly weren't _there_ yet.

"It'll be fine Merri, just for a few minutes." He smiled and indicated that the others were all engrossed in what they were doing. She'll try that, and if there was any gossip she was going to blame it all on him.

"Alright then." She rolled her eyes, and when he held his good arm for her to take she debated it a moment before taking hold. Maybe right now she was being a little too cautious about appearances. After what they had all just been through she wasn't sure that this was a problem.

They walked in silence until they got to the quiet of the corridor back through the building, then Pride leant a little closer to her and muttered quietly. "I'm sorry I've been an ass the last couple of weeks." She looked at him for a moment, confused about what he meant. He'd only been a pain in the ass when it had come to Baitfish, and that was probably to be expected.

"It's OK." She said, not really sure what else to say, contradicting him on things like that rarely ended well. having him apologising for being an ass was a huge deal right now, so she was going to take it that way.

"You seem to have started to trust more people here?" He asked, and she had to accept that he was a little right there. She had started to trust more people, but still nobody outside of a select group.

"I trust our team." She grinned. That was the simplest way to put it. She hadn't had cause to trust many people for anything for a long time, but she was slowly learning to trust again, and that included letting more people into their team. First she'd only trust Pride, LaSalle and Loretta, then Sebastian and Patton, now Percy too. She was learning.

"Well, that solves that problem then, doesn't it?" He chuckled at her and squeezed her arm against him. She was glad he didn't think she was nuts for only ever trusting their team, because it was necessary for her, right now. She'd trust more people, in time, just not right now.

"Percy is good, I'm glad we trust her. She's helped a lot." Add on that Percy seemed to have been the only person to get LaSalle to smile since Savannah had died, that won Brody over, she liked knowing that he pseudo-little brother was happy.

"She has." He agreed as he opened the door and went straight to the shelves by the bed. Those were the shelves that held his personal things, the things that mattered to his life. She wasn't sure how she felt accepting this chain again. She did need something though.

"King, you don't need to do this, you know." She just wanted to keep pushing that, because she didn't want him to wake up in a few days or weeks and regret that he'd given it to her. She supposed that LaSalle probably ha the same worry, but she was certain, and it had been her choice.

"I know, I want to. Now come here." He motioned to her, and when she didn't move fast enough he reached out and pulled him to her, then held out a chunky silver chain that matched the setting of the gem in Emily's pendant. That was impressive in and of itself.

"What's this?" She asked, and he just smiled at her. Clearly thinking of his own story, just as she'd been doing down in the courtyard a couple of hours earlier. She wondered if she'd had the same faraway and happy look as he had, or had she been more bittersweet.

"It's a chain that my mom gave to me when I was a kid, she told me it was for protection." That was sweet and meaningful. Emily's was for luck, his was for protection. They all seemed to have something significant involved. "I kept it safe in here because I never had anything to wear on it. Emily's pendant?" He held his hand out, and she handed him the pendant on automatic.

"King, I can't take it." She shook her head and dropped her hands away. She was truly thankful for the love and trust he was showing in her in offering something like this. But the fact his was from his mother seemed even more significant. She knew how he idolised his mother.

"Yes, you can. You're my family now, in more ways than one. Christopher can wear Savannah's pendant on Emily's chain. You can wear Emily's pendant on Helen's chain." He slipped the pendant fully onto the chain and held it out to her with a smile. "That proves you're part of my family."

"Thank you." She really couldn't say anything else, and as she put the necklace around her neck she smiled. She was finally home and that was such a new feeling for her. She wasn't really ready for that, but maybe that was how she knew this was right. Everywhere else she'd tried to fit in, to be at home, and it hadn't worked. Here they'd accepted her as she was, and that was the definition of home, wasn't it.


End file.
